


Questions

by Josselin



Series: Questions [1]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:38:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurent noticed that Damen talked a great deal during sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Questions

Damen was not, Laurent found, a generally talkative person. Damen wasn’t restrained -- he answered Laurent’s questions thoughtfully, he surprised Laurent with the occasional smart remark, and he came to Laurent in private with his own questions. But he didn’t ramble and he wasn’t fond of chatter merely for the sake of hearing one’s voice.

Laurent noticed that Damen talked a great deal during sex.

At first, Damen tended toward open ended questions. He kissed Laurent gently and caressed him reverently and asked questions like “What do you prefer?” or “How can I please you?”

Those might have been simple questions to answer for Akielons accustomed to commanding an entire harem of bedservants, but Laurent could not answer them.

Laurent returned with wit, or by being coy, or by telling Damen to quiet, or all of those in succession. If Damen pressed the question, the only way Laurent could give a frank answer was by placing himself outside his own mind and pretending he was someone else. Pretending to be someone else was a strategy that generally worked well for Laurent, and it would have been fine in this case if the exchange was limited to words, but Laurent’s body betrayed the ruse. Damen good-heartedly followed the direction of whoever Laurent had pretended to be, going along with whatever act pretend-Laurent had indicated would be pleasing. But the end result was inevitably that the act then failed to actually please Laurent.

Damen was clearly disappointed when his efforts did not turn out to be pleasing, and Laurent felt frustrated, and it led Damen down another series of questions about why what he was doing was not working and how he could be better, but Laurent had no answer to those questions either.

Laurent found he preferred focusing on Damen’s pleasure instead, which was straightforward and honest. Damen was easy to please and seemed to have no trouble with small cues, easily telling Laurent to shift more to the right, or to use more pressure.

Then, in perhaps their fourth or fifth encounter, depending on how one counted, Damen interrupted a series of his own questions before Laurent could reply with any type of crudity, narrowed his eyes on Laurent’s face, and said, “Would you prefer for me to direct you?”

The words Laurent had been going to say died off his tongue and there was a moment of silence between them. Laurent could feel his own heart beating in his chest. Damen’s chest was pressed against his and he thought he could feel Damen’s heartbeat as well; the two were almost synchronized.

Damen was waiting; Damen was still looking at his face closely. Laurent could not bring himself to speak.

Damen spoke instead, except his questions were suddenly different.

“When I touch you, like this,” he demonstrated. “Do you prefer a gentler touch? Firmer?” He stroked once gently and then more firmly, as though presenting the options.

“Gentler,” Laurent managed, and Damen adjusted his touch accordingly. Laurent was still overly conscious of the beat of his own heart.

“And do you prefer my hand? Or my mouth?”

“Hand.”

Damen nodded agreeably, as though they were having a reasonable conversation rather than stuck in a ridiculous and juvenile scenario.

Damen shifted closer to Laurent as he stroked him. “I like to be close to you,” Damen said, as though his action required explanation. “Is it comfortable for you if I hold you like this?”

“I would prefer,” Laurent said, and there was some small amount of irritation in his voice, “that you stopped talking and got on with it.”

Damen laughed easily, and that was at least a direction that he seemed to be able to follow. Laurent tried to focus on how he felt -- on the warmth of Damen’s skin where Damen had pressed them together, on how he felt cocooned in Damen’s smell with the man next to him and the sheets pulled around them loosely.

He pushed all of the other thoughts that plagued him violently aside in his head, refusing to think on how dissatisfying this must be for Damen, on how easy it would be for the King of Akielos to find someone easier to bed. Damen didn’t have access to his harems of perfumed and docile slaves while they were staying in Arles, of course, but there were plenty of pets competing for the attention of the exotic foreign royalty, not to mention all of the intrigued courtiers. Or the entire Akielon army, half of which seemed to have had some sort of encounter with their commander in his younger years.

Laurent had a habit of going riding when he wished to be alone. Auguste had teased him about it, saying that Laurent needed his favorite horse to be able to think his problems through satisfactorily, and that this must prove that the horse was wiser than Laurent himself.

Laurent had worried, when he told one of the grooms he wanted his horse saddled, that Damen would appear to accompany him in the same infuriating way he had always appeared during their campaign whenever Laurent was about to go off on his own. But Laurent managed to leave the manor without his barbarian protector or any of his guards attempting to slip along with him. 

When he returned, he dismissed the groom and cared for the mare himself. She was of the same stock as the one Auguste had gifted him in his teenage years, but he did not know her as well, yet. He spent time coming to know her after their ride, removing the tack and cleaning it, brushing her down and inspecting her hooves for stones. He covered her with a blanket and snuck a carrot to feed to her, stroking her nose gently. She blew out a breath of air at him. 

Laurent turned away from the horse reluctantly, his thoughts turning from the solitude of his ride to the court and everything that awaited him. As he pivoted toward the door, he saw Damen standing behind him, leaning against the frame of the stable door and watching him with a smile.

“Good ride?” said Damen, speaking Veretian. He was, as he had once taunted Laurent, more fluent in Veretian than Laurent was in his language, and so they tended to speak Veretian when alone together.

Laurent nodded and took off his riding gloves.

Damen smiled again. “I would like to talk to you.” Damen tilted his head toward an empty stall next to Laurent’s horse, and Laurent followed him inside it and sat down on a hay bale. Damen was dressed in the strange simple mix of Akielon and Veretian fashions he had adopted and made so popular in the court, and he looked as comfortable sitting across from Laurent on another bale as he did on the traditional Akielon throne that had been assembled next to Laurent’s own in the hall.

“It’s about sex --” said Damen, leaning in. Laurent could feel tension creeping into his own spine.

Laurent interrupted Damen with a brusque nod. “You should find another lover,” he said, because it was easier to tell Damen to do it than to hear Damen tell him he was going to do it. Or, perhaps he had already found one.

Damen sat up straighter, frowning. “Why?”

“Because,” Laurent swallowed, and forced the words out. His voice sounded clipped. “I cannot provide what you want.”

Damen’s forehead creased. “It seems to me the opposite. You are quite adept at pleasing me, and I would like to do the same for you.”

“That’s what I mean,” Laurent rested his fingers on his knee and forced himself to lighten the pressure so they were not clenched or white. “You -- want things from me that I can’t give.”

Damen wore a thoughtful expression, and he was quiet for a moment, considering. “And so, I should find someone else?”

“Yes.”

Damen tilted his head slightly, regarding Laurent. “You are usually full of creative plans, and have mapped in your head twelve ways to each of the targets you site. It seems that there are other paths for us.”

Laurent looked down at his own hands, and forcibly relaxed them once again. “What do you--”

“I was going to ask,” Damen said, “if you would prefer to talk before, or after. If it is too hard to discuss during, perhaps we could make a plan for what would happen later, and then would only need to confer during the night on if the plan was proceeding as anticipated.”

Laurent swallowed around a retort that his plans always went as anticipated, which was flip and Damen knew it not to be true, anyway. His plans surrounding Damen never went as he thought.

“Or if you would prefer to write to me,” Damen said. “Would it be easier to put down in words on parchment? I could read it privately, if you wished, or with you there, if that were more pleasing. And we could burn the parchment together after I read it -- I do not intend anything compromising.

“There are many things that I wonder.” Damen was leaning in again, and Laurent could feel himself leaning in also, helplessly, as a flower slowly opening toward the sun. “I am not dissatisfied with what we have had together, Laurent.” He had the same faint Akielon accent when he said Laurent’s name as he’d had the first time he said it when they were in bed together.

“If you do not wish to be intimate,” Damen said, and he was more delicate than a Veretian would have been. “Then I hope that we can still be close. Friends? Companions?” Something clouded his face for a moment. “I might have said brothers,” he offered, “except that neither of us have had exceptionally fortunate luck with brothers. Something better than that, but with no less intensity of feeling.

“Or if you enjoy intimacy but prefer not to be touched sometimes, or only in certain moods, perhaps we could find some sort of signal, so that I could know --”

“Like a mare in heat?” said Laurent, interrupting crudely.

Damen had a knowing look in his eyes. “Yes, perhaps when you insult me most vilely I would know that meant you were feeling amorous--”

“I --” Laurent found it difficult to continue. Damen waited. “I am not patient with myself when I feel that my skills are lacking,” he finished, finally.

Damen seemed to consider this. “Yet you have acquired many skills that only come with long practice. You’re an accomplished horseman, a talented swordsman. So I know that you can persist when you find something you consider worthwhile.”

Laurent nodded. 

“And so,” Damen said, with the beginnings of a smile. “I am willing to practice if you are.”

“Yes,” Laurent said, trying it out. “Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Tresa for such patient cheerleading when I was stuck!


End file.
